


Bubbling Brook and Flickering Flame

by aparticularbandit



Category: Jane the Virgin (TV)
Genre: F/F, Gift Exchange, albeit, i may have taken this in a different direction than expected oops, just having trouble? thinking of? a good? title?, nymphs au, roisa secret santa, sharing body heat to survive, sorry the title is NOT great
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2019-12-23
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:34:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21925258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aparticularbandit/pseuds/aparticularbandit
Summary: They told her never to go up the mountain.Above all, they told her, never go up the mountain alone.
Relationships: Luisa Alver/Rose Solano
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Luthor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luthor/gifts).



> HAPPY GIFT-GIVING DAY!
> 
> (Yes, these notes are the same as the tumblr post, sorry.)
> 
> I started something that fit the trope better and wrote it for almost three weeks and then this idea just /popped/ into my head and I just /no. finish the other one. then you can try and do this one./ But then Friday I actually got up early and just /fine. I'll start it but I have to finish the other one first./ And I'm sure you know how it is when a story just !!!!
> 
> This one is significantly better, and I really, truly hope that you enjoy it as much as I've enjoyed writing it!

They told her never to go up the mountain. Above all, they told her, never go up the mountain alone.

The mountain loomed large just out of the humans’ little village – the largest of the nearby range – so large that its peak was crowned with snow all year long and often hidden behind large clusters of clouds. Sometimes the humans would bring sacrifices to the mountain’s edge or to the altar two days’ travel up its crisscrossing path; sometimes they would bring animals and leave them there, alive, to join the flocks they could just see living further up its slope, out of the pathways they deemed safe to travel; and sometimes they would look at the storm clouds stretching from those surrounding its peak and bring plants, seedlings, in pots so that they might die instead of their crops.

These customs began long before she was conscious enough to have memory: her earliest memories held the stink of forgotten animals and dying plants just out of sight and out of reach. She’d never seen them, but she knew they were there. It was impossible not to know. Just as she couldn’t _not_ know the feel of roots digging into the cold hard earth, the warmth of the sun turning into sustenance along their leaves, the blooming of petals as sure as the growth of wheat in the fields as sure as grapes bursting along their vines as sure as corn becoming ears through which no one but she and her people could hear.

The wind rustles through leaves and she feels it on her skin.

The sun moves warm over the green earth and it warms her.

The world grows conscious of itself and she does, too.

The humans left presents for her and her kind, too, but they did not reek of things abandoned and left to their own devices. They sacrificed things untended to the mountain, but they sacrificed art and beauty to her. Sprigs of vines were brought to what they believed was her home on the edge of the woods and kept alive so that she might have food to eat; flowers were woven into living crowns decorating the forest floor and tended to so that they might not be devoured by weeds; and small, intricately carved wooden houses hung from tree branches for little birds to live in and keep their families safe.

The birds were her favorite. She liked their song. Most often she appeared among them, a rosy crown atop her flowing brown hair, speaking to them in chirps and birdsong with eyes too brown to be green and too green to be brown, but she was never able to quite mimic it. Probably because she wasn’t a bird. They couldn’t quite mimic her either. Probably because they weren’t like her.

Her form more often matched those of the humans in their village than her counterparts, who drew more inspiration from the cracked grey-brown bark of trees, the veiny red and gold of falling leaves, or the speckled, ruffled feathers of disgruntled birds before flight, and in heart, she more closely matched the humans as well. Where her kind only knew and repeated the adage of the mountain – _do not go, do not go alone_ – and forever passed it out of mind, she would lay spread out on grass soft and green from the morning dew or a fresh rain shower and look at the large creation and wonder, wonder, _wonder_.

What was so dangerous that she could not go? What was so horrific that she could not go alone? What could want such wild, destructive sacrifices?

~~Did she ever ask for sacrifices or did the humans only give them in hopes that their gifts would gain favors from creatures who would do as they pleased regardless and did not have near the level of control that the humans believed that they did?~~

They called her _Tidings of Spring_ or _Life-Giver_ , but she did not use that name for herself. Instead, when she most wanted to appear human and mingle with them, she called herself _Luisa_ – _Lu_ for the bubbling and burbling of the brooks through the forest and _isa_ for the attempts at speech the youngest humans had when they saw her, reaching out their tiny hands and grabbing at the light pink rose petals or thin green vines of her dress. It was far easier to understand the actions of the humans by moving amongst them, but there was nothing to explain their actions on the mountain or why they seemed to be just as afraid of its presence as her own people were.

Curiosity overtook her, eventually, as it always does those who wonder. Maybe it was that she was younger than the other nymphs, but age did not matter to them. Maybe she was born under the wrong star, but that would mean that some stars are better than others and to her they all seemed equal in beauty. Maybe it was impossible to stare up at the snow-covered mountain day after day, year after year, and not yearn for something she did not understand.

And so, as always happened and always would, she went.


	2. Chapter 2

The humans brought her to their altar and left her there.

They were not always aware that she was there at all, sitting on the back of their cart with the hens and lambs, but they were certain that _something_ was: the cart was too quiet to imagine that the animals were without some presence soothing them. A glimpse here and there revealed songbirds who would turn and watch them if they remained too long, and on the odd occasion, they might see the image of a young woman with dark skin and darker hair all wrapped in a dress made of rose petals and with a thorny crown of the same atop her head who would look at them with an eager smile – but neither of these lasted long enough for them to capture and retain an image of what was seen. _Something was there_ , they would say later, but exactly _what_ it was they could not say.

When they emptied the cart of their animals, they emptied it of her, too, and though empty, it felt much heavier on the return journey.

The altar lay at the place where the mountain, though still covered in a spattering of grass and rocks, felt its coldest before its skin was covered in snow. Pathways crisscrossed further up, but they grew barren as Luisa took her first steps on them and away from what she knew. All at once, the mountain seemed to shift around her: the bright blue sky overhead replaced with clouds raining snow, the soft green grass replaced with rocks and a piling of that same snow, and the bright warm sun hidden away so that the world appeared grey and full of dread.

Her bare feet, attuned to soft leaves and softer grass, were unprepared for the mountain’s harsh rocks and harsher snow. One cut into her soles and the other burned cold until she quickly grew numb to it. They turned a shade she had never seen before – from their soft brown the shade of maple or cinnamon to something else entirely. She had seen blue as the feathers of the blue jay and blue as the mottled shell of a robin’s egg and blue of the sky above unmarred by clouds, but this was the blue of the dead and the dying, things of which she knew in passing but had never seen, a blue that turned black the longer she ignored it. But she imbued herself with her memories of the warmth of the sun on the plants below and maintained the image of health even as she struggled.

Her dress of petals and vines wilted under the mountain’s bitter winds. Pieces refused to remain woven together and flew away, and it was only the thorns stuck in her hair that kept her crown in place. But the roses must have changed color from the softest of pinks to something much whiter in hue to match the snow billowing around her, their edges turning a golden brown as they began to fade. What warmth she could give herself could not be kept within them, and so as she struggled, they gave in, and their colors shifted from bright and full to dead and dead.

Her eyes, too, faded – not enough green to be more than the mottled, shifting browns now covering her skin. Everything was brown and white and grey, even the sky above her, devoid of any of the colors she’d come to love below, and so it was only by chance that she found a hollow carved out into the side of the mountain like those by the brooks in the forest the humans deemed her home, but darker, more foreboding. She crept into it for protection from the wind, watched as her breath became a cloud of its own before dissipating, and looked down the mountain for any sight of the forest or the humans’ little village at its edge.

There was nothing.

Luisa understood, then, why they said to never go up the mountain, but she did not understand why they said not to go alone. Bringing someone else would only prolong the pain of it: she could not climb down again any more easily with someone than without, and the loss of two would feel much harsher than the loss of only one.

By this time, it was hard to keep the blue and black like bruises from creeping under her skin – not just her feet, but the tips of her fingers, the light brown of her skin – and no matter how much she remembered the warmth and light of the sun below, it was so much harder to feel such things here, in the dark dank of this cavern under a sky just as white, grey, and cold as the rest of the mountainside.

She crept further into the cave to do what she’d heard of and hadn’t imagined could happen to someone like her; she crept into the cave to die.

But farther back, Luisa found another figure like her and yet not like her – in the form of a human, just as she was, but clearly not one of them, in the same manner that she clearly was not as well. This one was also womanly in shape, but thinner and of the same ice beauty as the mountains outside – white and white and _white_ – but of the same subtle softness of petals instead of the harshness of cold, with hair like the fires the human villagers held at the edges of her memory, right before the months-long sleep, and not like the golden veiny reds of the falling leaves or the bright reds of male cardinals looking for a mate. The creature was dressed in a dress like Luisa’s, only instead of being made from living plants now dead from the cold, hers was made of whorls of ice with harsh, sharp edges, some of which were tinged with the much softer, sparkling snow, and her feet were just as bare as Luisa’s were, just as white as the rest of her, with nails tinged in blue.

On seeing her, Luisa wondered if her own skin would eventually turn ghastly white instead of this blue-grey, and if she, too, would look like this in death, until she noticed that the woman’s chest appeared to be moving as though she, too, were breathing the same air that she was, as though she, too, were struggling for life. As Luisa watched, the creature took a deep breath and curled up onto her side, pulling her long extended limbs into a seed-like ball as though she were trying to conserve warmth.

Luisa reached out and touched the creature’s skin, but it felt cold, far colder than her own did. Because she was _Tidings of Spring_ and _Life-Giver_ , she curled up next to the frozen snow woman, rested her head on her chest, closed her eyes, and brought forth her memories of sun and warm rain and growing green grass, reaching out to those sensations still being felt far below and far in the back of her mind almost disconnected, trying to bring summer warmth to them both, most of all to this creature she had never seen and who might only awaken while she slumbered.

The fire of the woman’s bright hair flickered, but she was not awake to see it, only felt her warmth mimicked by something far deeper within.


	3. Chapter 3

When Luisa finally awoke, it was to the sound of crackling and popping and to the feel of something other than her memories warming her skin. Her bleary eyes stared at the fire snapping away in front of her, speaking in a tongue that she could not comprehend, and coating the cavern with a fine layer of grey and black that looked like the ash it might leave behind among its coals but thicker, like the smoke in the air but much more sticky. Her nose scrunched up, and she scooted away from the small blaze, worried about what the sparks might do to her dress, now crafted not of living plants but of the crackling, crunching nature of ones torn from their roots and left to dry out, what the humans might use to feed their flames.

But as she scooted back, Luisa found herself banging into something much colder than the wet burning snow outside or the dry burning wind that made her skin crack and ooze sap. She shivered, her bare arms springing across her chest so that she could rub her hands along them the way she had seen the humans do beside their fires, and she looked up to see none other than the creature she had seen before – the not-human who held the shape of a human woman the way she herself did.

The woman watched her with deep blue eyes – the same color as the lake when it reflected the sky just as the sunset’s rose and lavender faded before the stars began to shine – and looking at them, instead of the woman’s snow white skin or fire red hair or foreign blue tinted lips, made her feel warmer and safer than the hostile destructive force of the fire in front of her.

“Who are you?” asked the woman, her voice the sound of icicles cracking or sleet falling against a window pane.

Luisa drew herself up like a seed to conserve her warmth. “The humans call me _Tidings of Spring_ or _Life-Giver_.” She blinked twice. ‘I have never seen someone like you before.”

“Are you truly either of those things?” asked the woman, her voice softening to that of snow falling on a cloudy day. Her gaze narrowed, and she knelt in front of Luisa, blue eyes searching her for something, although she could not tell what.

This close, Luisa was able to make out the individual whorl patterns in the ice of the woman’s dress. They weren’t swirls at all, but something else entirely. She couldn’t tell what. Maybe another design the woman saw here in the mountains that she’d tried to construct the way the humans built roads out of pebbles and pretended that was the way the beds of bubbling brooks looked.

“I don’t know,” Luisa said finally, averting her gaze so that she instead focused on the cavern’s rock floor. “What do they call you?”

The woman paused for so long that Luisa could not help but look up at her again. This time, it was the woman whose gaze was drawn away, her eyes peering into the crackling flames, and she said with a voice crackling like the same, “ _Winter Frost_ , _Life-Harvester_ , but that is not who I am and not what I call myself.”

“Who are you,” Luisa asked, both because that seemed to be the question the other wanted her to ask and because in finding out her answer she might be able to better understand what her own should be, “and what do you call yourself?”

“I am the first hint of snow as it grows in the clouds above,” the woman began, her voice soothing as a mug of hot chocolate after a long day shoveling pathways, as she turned towards Luisa, her eyes bright with knowledge. “I’m the chill of the air when the sun moves further away and begins to rest sooner in its bed. I’m the slow creaking of the water beneath a sheen of ice and the cracking of that ice when an unwary boot splits it through. I’m the crunch of snow and fallen branches beneath the weight of animals crossing their favorite pathways, and I’m the cool of a cave hidden away on an untouched mountaintop. I’m the blue-black of your skin when you greet me unprotected, the numb and then fire warmth as you succumb to my hunger, the shiver down your spine when you wander too far and have no way to return, and yet I’m also the warmth of the flame kept in its den to protect you from my own cold breath when you stumble and stagger for help.” Her blue eyes flickered hot with the crackling of the fire before them, but her cheeks grew a soft shade of red before she said, her eyes diverting away from Luisa’s again to focus on the flames, “I call myself Rose.”

Luisa nodded once in understanding, although she had never thought about it enough to consider the things that she was. Her voice, therefore, was much more tentative, much more hesitant as she spoke her truth. “I am the warmth of the sun as it feeds the plants below and the roots of those same plants as they dig deeper into the earth. I am the bubbling of the brook as it leaps among the rocks in its bed and the gurgling of the fish as they swim beneath it. I am what hears through the ears of corn, though no one knows why they are called thus, and I am the sweet taste of grapes first harvested when they are fully grown. I am the soft touch of rose petals against your skin and the sharp of their thorns when you try to pluck them from their bush; I am the happy bumbling of a newborn child and its shattered screaming when it does not understand how to speak; I am the happy chatter of birds and their sweet song and the lonesome howl of a wolf at a moon it can never catch; and I am the forest untamed by human touch. I am everything green that grows and everything young that is born and everything hoping for its future, and I call myself Luisa.”

“You cannot be _everything_ ,” Rose said, her eyes drifting from the fire back to her, “can you?”

Luisa opened her mouth to speak and did not think better of it. “I told you who I am just like you told me who you are.” She frowned. “I think, if it were someone else like me, they would say that we are everything that you would deny, but I also think, if they were like me, then they would be here instead of me, and I don’t see anyone else but us.” She brushed her dark hair behind one ear and shivered once before meeting Rose’s dark blue eyes again. “Why are you staring at me like that?”

“There are others like you?” Rose’s brows lifted, and her blue-tinged lips settled into an amused smile. “Then you _cannot_ be everything. You must share that with them.”

Luisa thought about that. “I guess you’re right.”

“Of course, I’m right.” Rose laced her fingers together across her stomach as she leaned back against one of her cavern’s rocks. Her smile grew smug. “I have to share with my people, and you have to share with yours. Neither of us can be _everything_. It’s like you’ve never been asked that before.”

“I haven’t. I’ve only been told what the humans called me and heard it and given myself a name.” Luisa frowned. “It’s never mattered to me how I’d explain to someone else what I am. Have _you_ been asked who you are?”

Rose’s face grew red again, like the humans’ did when they were embarrassed, although Luisa couldn’t see why a creature like herself or like Rose might react that way, and she looked away. “No. But I thought I might. Someday.” She turned back to Luisa. “And I _was_ , so—”

The wind outside the cavern gave a mighty howling, and snow brushed from outside into the fire and against Luisa’s skin. In the one, it melted immediately, but it stuck to the other, giving her dark skin a blueish tint. She brushed the snow away with her fingers, but in so doing, her fingertips grew the same mottled black as they had been before she’d curled up next to Rose in her attempt to warm them both. But with the snow gone, they quickly returned to their normal color in the warmth given off by the fire.

“I think you’re killing me,” Luisa said, her voice very soft, the feathery down on the forest floor when baby birds become adults. “You touch me, and my skin burns with cold and turns colors I’ve never seen before on anything healthy and growing and alive.” Her gaze moved from her fingertips to Rose. “I thought you might be dead when I saw you, except that you were breathing. Are you always so cold?”

Rose’s smile faded, as so many things in the winter months do, and she crept closer to Luisa, being careful not to let her skin brush against her. “Touch my hair,” she said, “and you will find that I’m not as cold as you think.”

Luisa hesitated – both not wanting to uncross her arms and stretch them outward, as she would lose what little warmth they were holding inward, and uncertain of how the other creature’s hair might feel – but she believed that Rose did not intend to harm her in the same manner that she had tried to save them both only a few hours earlier. So, tentative, she reached out one of her hands and let her fingertips brush through the hair bright as the flame in front of her. At first, its curls felt soft and warm – soft as living grass beneath her feet, warm as a sun-heated rock by the river – but as her hand lingered, the heat grew – fierce, consuming – and Luisa flinched, tearing her fingers back, to find little flames at the tips of her nails, ones that quickly died when she beat them against the palm of her other hand. Then her eyes widened, and she stared, hurt, at the other woman. “You did that on purpose.”

“No.” Rose’s blue-tinted lips pressed together in such a firm line that Luisa thought it made them look even bluer. “I didn’t intend that any more than I intend you to change colors when my wind brushes against your skin. It isn’t my fault that you can’t handle it.” Her eyes narrowed. “What do you do when I come down from the mountains?”

“When you—?” Luisa spluttered. “I have never seen anyone like you before, and if you came down from the mountains, surely I would know what you looked like. I—” But she stopped herself short, remembering those flames at the edges of her memories, and her eyes widened again. “You come during the months-long sleep, when everything is cold and we hide ourselves away in clusters in caves and dens to keep warm.” She paused. “Is that what you were doing when I curled up next to you?” she asked. “Is that _your_ months-long sleep?”

Rose shook her head. “I do not sleep like you do. I wait and bide my time here on the mountain until I grow bored and decide to visit the humans. I cull the dead parts from your plants and allow your rivers to breathe easy and cause your humans to shear their lambs so that they keep warm and your animals are not bowed over by the weight of their wool.” She glanced away. “I have seen your kind in your caves, huddling together away from me and my people, and I have crept unbidden towards you and watched you shiver and cling closer together as my feet bring frost into your dens.” Her lips pursed. “But there was one of you dressed in something soft, like the petals of the plants the humans leave on the edge of my permanent domain, something light and pink that the humans told me is called a rose.” Her dark eyes peered into the darkness of the cave, and her cheeks grew red again. “It is for that I took my name, though before that I had called myself Clara.”

“That was me!” Luisa glanced down at her dress, once so soft and light. “I know it doesn’t look like it now, but before I came up here, my dress was just as you described. No one else has a dress like mine. None of the others even appear human.” She frowned and let out a deeply held breath. “Do your people look like you?”

Rose shook her head again. “They take harsher shapes with claws like the white bears or large tusks like seals, with hair clear like ice with edges just as jagged, and with eyes the color of rocks or the purple-green fire lights in the sky. Humans appear too fragile to them, and the fire of my hair is too hard for them to maintain without melting the frost of their skin.” She grinned, then, apparently quite pleased with herself. “They think they’re better because they’re all of one kind, but they forget that we’re more than cold and ice and mulch. We’re fire and blood and heat, too, just not of the sun, like you are.”

“So you’re different like I’m different,” Luisa said, and she tentatively reached her hand out for Rose again, placing it on hers for only a few seconds before she grew too cold and had to rip it away. She took a deep breath and then let it out in a long yawn, barely having enough time to cover her mouth as she did.

“The cold makes you tired.”

Luisa nodded once and shivered again despite herself as Rose moved yet closer to her. It was only then that she realized what the whirling design on Rose’s dress was meant to be. “Are those flowers?” she asked, looking up to meet Rose’s dark blue eyes.

Rose’s eyes narrowed. “They’re roses. Don’t they _look_ like roses?”

“No,” Luisa said. “Haven’t you ever seen a rose?”

Rose didn’t speak then, her gaze tearing away from Luisa’s, and her arms crossed, hiding the intricate designs on her dress – the roses that looked more like dandelions than anything else. “Yes. Your dress is made of rose petals. They must look something like this.”

It was only then that Luisa realized that any rose she might have seen must have faded long before Rose would make her way down the mountain, its petals turning white and then brown as the ones that made up her dress had, leaving only thorns behind. “You’ve never seen a living rose,” she murmured, and the sadness in her voice was the same as that of a dog left outside its owner’s house. Before Rose could have a chance to reply, she continued, her eyes lighting up, “Would you like to see one? There are some in bloom right now, just outside the forest. I can take you to see them, if you’ll come down the mountain with me.”

“Come down the mountain with you?” Rose echoed. Her gaze drifted to the opening of the cavern, and she took a deep breath. Then she shivered once, which made no sense to Luisa, who only knew that her new friend couldn’t be cold. “I can try.”

“Good!” Luisa smiled so pleasantly that she almost felt entirely like herself again. She yawned again and looked towards the flames still crackling away in that language she could not understand, although it sounded just as excited as she was. “I’m afraid to sleep next to the fire,” she said, watching it, that flickering that appeared to wave towards her. “It could catch on my dress, and then I would burn.” She looked over and met Rose’s eyes. “Can you hold me while I sleep? Between the heat of your fire, the cold of your skin, and the flames of your hair, I think I might be able to rest. We can leave once I wake up.” Her gaze moved over Rose’s shoulder to the entrance of the cavern. “I don’t think I can stay here much longer. Your fire burns where I need it to soothe, and your ice will kill me if I let it.”

“Of…of course,” Rose replied. Her face turned that same shade of red as it had before as she answered, and she stretched out her arms, opening them to Luisa, who moved to curl into them.

At first, all Luisa could feel was the cold burning blue and black into her skin, but as she buried her head against the soft snow framing Rose’s dress, she could feel that beneath all the winter wrappings, the heart of the other woman was burning as fire hot as the hair on her head. Rose’s skin was soft and her hold was gentle, and Luisa found herself feeling at home in her grasp, despite how cold she still felt. Then, as she closed her eyes, she felt Rose’s fingers brush her own dark hair out of her face and behind one of her ears, followed by a touch petal soft on her forehead that she’d never felt before, one that only made her relax more.

“Thank you,” Luisa murmured, and she felt the heat in Rose’s chest grow and spread as she tightened her hold on her. If it weren’t so dangerously cold, she thought, she could stay here. Maybe this temptation was why they said not to go up the mountain alone. Or maybe they simply didn’t want her to bring anyone else back with her at the improper time.


	4. Chapter 4

The next morning dawned bright and early, and although previously the view of the sky from the mountain had been nothing but cloudy and grey and the weather had been equally nothing but snow and ice, this morning the sun beamed through the clouds, which seemed to be empty of their cold weather. The mountain itself was still covered with ice and snow, but the appearance of the sun warmed Luisa’s heart enough to get up and moving, despite the fact that her skin still turned a mottled blue-grey when she left the fire warmth of the cavern.

As she and Rose made their way down the mountain, Luisa found that her feet grew numb and then fire hot much more quickly than they had when she made her way up the mountain alone. She began to stumble as she walked, arms rotating wildly in the air to try and maintain a balance she no longer had.

Then Rose pressed a gentle hand to her spine, just where her rose petal dress had broken during her climb up the mountain, and held her in place. “Here.” She moved in front of Luisa and held out one hand. “Let me help you.”

Luisa didn’t hesitate to take Rose’s hand in her own. Her palm felt that same numb and then fire hot as the soles of her feet, but when she looked, her hand didn’t gain the same blue tint that her feet had. “How are you doing that?” she asked as Rose carefully led her down the mountain.

“Doing what?”

“Keeping me warm.”

Rose didn’t pause but continued down the mountain, making sure to find easy paths for their feet, as she said, “I am the fire burning bright in the night. Why should I keep that heat only in my hair? Can’t I make myself appear as I wish?” She glanced back with a steady grin. “In your forest, couldn’t you do the same?”

“I don’t know,” Luisa said as she followed Rose, making sure to step in the same places the other nymph had. “I haven’t had any reason to try. How do you do it?”

“I focus. It’s easier when I’m remembering the fire instead of the snow. It’d be harder if it weren’t so shiny.” Rose covered her eyes with one hand in an attempt to ward off the glare of the sun as she faced forward again, but surrounded by snow, it didn’t help.

Then Luisa understood. “You do the same thing I did when I found you! I used my memories of the sun and the plants to make myself warmer. But it’s hard to do when it’s so cold here. It feels like I’m completely disconnected from myself.” She shivered, and her hand instinctively tightened on Rose’s. “Is that how you made your hair fire red instead of whatever it is the rest of your people do?”

Rose nodded. “You’ve got it.”

“What made you decide to do that?” Luisa asked, suddenly curious. “And why did you put the roses on your dress? Shouldn’t you be all cold and frost?”

“My people want nothing to do with the humans,” Rose began, her voice like snowfall. “They bring sacrifices to the edge of our permanent domain, but those mean nothing to us. We have no use for the plants they leave behind, and their animals scatter on our mountains. Most of them do not survive. The ones that do make it to other valleys where they are taken captive by other bands of humans. If anything, what they leave us is more of an annoyance than any help.” She carefully led Luisa through a tricky path where the mountain rocks were covered in ice. Luisa slipped and tilted forward, but Rose held her steady so that she did not fall.

Then Rose continued. “I sought out the humans to try and understand why they would leave us creatures and plants to aggravate us and came to understand that they thought those things would appease us instead. It was there that I realized the fires they built to keep themselves warm in my presence were just as much a part of me as the cold dread that they feared, and it was then that I began to explore near your forest as well and found you and your kind curled up in your dens. I thought that your flowers were beautiful and alive, even though any time I tried to touch those left by the humans, they did not last, and I thought I could try to create some of my own.” Rose shook her head. “It doesn’t look like that worked.”

“I think it was a valiant effort.” Luisa gave Rose’s hand a gentle squeeze again as she noticed that the snow was beginning to fade away and that they were reaching more rocks and a few tufts of grass along the mountainside. She began to feel her feet again, and she took deep breaths of warm air as they passed the altar where the humans left their sacrifices.

Rose’s hand grew wet in her own.

Luisa turned to face Rose, smiling as she relaxed, and noticed that Rose’s face was beginning to drip with sweat. She reached out and brushed some of the water away from her eyes. “Are you feeling okay?” she asked, her eyes widening. “You look like the humans do on the hottest summer day, and we haven’t even made it off the mountain yet.”

Rose swallowed once. “I will be fine,” she said, but a few moments after they continued to walk, she asked, “Is it possible that there are living roses closer than the edge of your forest? I do not think I can make it that far.”

“Why shouldn’t you?”

By now, it was Luisa who was leading Rose down the mountain, although she did not know the way. She could feel the growing grass and the bubbling brook calling her, and the petals and vines that made up her dress began to return to life, the dead brown returning first to white and then pink as they neared the mountain’s base. When she turned back to face Rose, she saw that the woman’s face had changed from its snow white to something translucent and ghastly, and that the same sickly sheen had taken over the rest of her body. The beautiful ice dress had begun to melt and barely clung to her; her bright red hair smoldered and smoked where it touched her skin; and her deep blue eyes seemed almost coal black. “Rose?”

Rose took a deep, shuddering breath and seemed to smile. “If I’m killing you up on the mountain, then I think it must be _you_ who are killing _me_ here.” She gave Luisa’s hand another squeeze, and while it was still gentle, it was far weaker than it had been before. “Can you show me one of your roses? Then I can go back up before I melt.”

“Melt?” Luisa repeated. “Is there any way I can keep you cool?” But she knew as soon as she asked that it couldn’t possibly be the case. She was warmth and sunlight and growing plants, and while Rose might have learned a way to keep her warm without losing her cool, Luisa knew of nothing in the forest or the plains or anything of hers that could possibly give her a way to cool Rose down.

“Just show me your rose,” Rose said, licking her lips once, “and then perhaps it would be best for you not to see me anymore. I cannot keep you alive the way you need to be on my mountain, and you cannot keep me alive down here away from it.” She cupped Luisa’s cheek and pressed her lips to her forehead – that same petal soft touch Luisa had felt before and hadn’t known what it was, although this time she was certain Rose left a watery mark on her dark skin.

Luisa cast her eyes about the edge of the mountain, and there, just at the bottom, was a rose torn from its bush and almost trampled. She thought one of the humans must have taken it from one of their bushes, for there was a tint of red on one of its thorns. “Here.” Instead of pulling Rose to the flower, she left her behind, picked the rose up in her bare hands, and carried it to her. “This is a rose,” she said, handing it over, “and these petals,” she carefully ran her finger along them, “are what my dress is made of.”

Rose ran the tip of one wet finger along the rose’s petals, and the little flower opened as though drinking the water in would let it grow roots once more. “Can I take it with me?” she asked, and then, in the same breath, asked instead, “If I leave it here with you, will it live?”

“Yes,” Luisa said at first, and then, “No. You see here, where the stem is broken?” She ran her hand along the ripped edge. “I can’t fix it. Even if you don’t take it, I can’t keep it alive.”

“Oh.” Rose ran her fingers along the soft petals again. “Then I’ll keep it. To remember your visit by.” She smiled and took a deep breath. “I have to—”

“ _Go._ ” Luisa said the word before Rose could, and almost as though she were waiting to hear Luisa say it, Rose turned back, gave her a sad expression, her cheeks burning a bright red, and then fled up the mountainside with her little rose.

Luisa watched as the other nymph sped away from her, watched until Rose stopped – a small figure seeming even smaller on the large mountainside – and turned, holding one hand up in a little wave. She raised her hand to do the same and then watched until she couldn’t see Rose anymore.


	5. Epilogue

They told her never to go up the mountain. Above all, they told her, never go up the mountain alone.

Luisa had been curious before what might happen, but this time, she was certain she would survive.

Again, she climbed into the back of one of the human’s carts, and again, she hid in it, surrounded by birds and their song, and grinned pleasantly at the humans who noticed her at all. But as soon as they turned away, her joyful grin was replaced with a look of grim determination, and her eyes, still too brown to be green and too green to be brown, stared off into the distance, towards the mountain and a path upwards that she barely remembered.

Again, the humans left her at the altar with their sacrifices, and again, their cart, although empty, felt heavier on the return. But this time, they were accustomed to the strange happening, and they did not look back for something they couldn’t have seen even if they had looked – the image of a warm summer nymph looking up into the snow and forcing herself back into the cold.

Again, she climbed the mountain, and again, the wind howled and the snow fell. But this time, she came with protection for her feet and her skin so that they would not grow the mottled blue-grey, and this time, her dress was made of something far more sturdy than the petals and vines that she wore when she came, unknowingly, before.

The hollow in the mountain face seemed so much smaller than Luisa remembered when she found it, and the cave seemed so much dimmer. She shivered once despite herself. Her eyes cast about the cavern, looking for the woman she hadn’t known to look for the first time, and when she did not see her, she called, her voice soft as the summer rains, “Rose? Are you here? Can you hear me?”

There was no reply, but when Luisa moved deeper into the cave, she found the woman nearly the same as she had found her before, only this time she was already curled up on one side, her arms pulled in as though to conserve a warmth that Luisa knew she never needed. She knelt down next to her and brushed a hand through her hair hot as a fire’s flame in winter, and Rose snapped up, her dark blue eyes opening, staring at her.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Rose said at once, and she stood, jumping to her feet. “You’ll die. I can’t take you down as far as I did. But I—”

Luisa held up her finger and pressed it to Rose’s blue-tinged lips. “Ask me who I am again.” Her eyes twinkled a bright forest green.

Rose stared at her, unblinking, and asked, her voice again like the cracking of icicles. “Who are you?”

“I am the growth of the evergreen forest through the winter snow, even though all other trees have faded,” Luisa began. She took her hands and pressed them against Rose’s cheeks, where they did not turn the mottled blue and black as they had before. “I am the cold bubbling brook into which the humans place their metal boxes to keep their meat fresh.” She couldn’t stop herself from grinning. “I am the seed buried beneath the snow that waits for the littlest melting so that it might use that water to grow.”

She hadn’t changed who she was at all, the same as Rose hadn’t changed when she found the flame. If anything, she’d only discovered parts of herself that she hadn’t even known could exist until she needed to find them.

“Is it enough?” Luisa asked, her eyes searching Rose’s blue ones, and she frowned when the other woman shook her head.

Rose pulled the white rose from where she’d kept it hidden in the cave, her eyes focusing on it instead. “Ask me.”

Luisa watched, curious, uncertain. “Who are you?”

“I’m the warmth of the flame kept in its den to protect you from my cold breath as you stagger and stumble,” Rose said, repeating one of the same phrases she’d said so long ago. “I’m the cold that preserves life in its grasp until it begins again.” Her fingertips brushed along the petals of the white rose in her hands, and she handed it to Luisa, who noticed that it looked and felt the same as it had the day she gave it to her. Then, Rose grinned. “I’m the cold in the bubbling brook keeping the metal boxes cold, and,” she tilted her head to one side, unable to keep from smiling, “I’m the snow above ground, melting as it is hit by the sun, so that the seed beneath it, protected throughout her months-long sleep, might grow again to reach the sky.”

“That is enough,” Luisa said, and she placed the rose on one of the cavern’s rocks beside her before wrapping her arms around the other woman, pulling her close to her. At first, Rose hesitated, but then her arms were holding her tight as well. But this time, it was Luisa who knew something Rose did not, knew from watching the humans on their holidays and as they reunited with their loved ones after a long time apart.

When she leaned forward and pressed her lips against Rose’s, Luisa hadn’t known what to expect. The other woman’s lips, though tinged with blue, were as petal soft as her own were, and though so much of her was cold, they were burning with warmth. Rose sighed and melted against her.

Luisa pulled away just long enough to say, “The humans call it a—”

“I know what the humans call it,” Rose said before kissing her again, and this time, it was Luisa who melted against the frozen fire of the other nymph’s embrace.

She understood, then, why she was told to stay where she was. Nymphs such as herself – such as Rose – once seeing each other were hard pressed to be together, bending to discover new realms of themselves and merging their definitions until they mixed together. Going up the mountain once, she would never truly be alone again, being met by another like her instead. The words were not a warning but a truth.

Go up the mountain, they meant. Go up the mountain, and find yourself.


End file.
